In the prior art, a harvester may place harvested material at geographic locations within a work area. An operator of a forwarder may locate the harvested material through trial and error, intuition, or past experience. To the extent that the operator of a forwarder discovers the harvested material after one or more unsuccessful attempts to find the harvested material, the power consumption and efficiency of the forwarder is reduced with respect to the optimal case of making only successful attempts.
For example, when an operator of a log forwarder comes to a worksite, the operator may not know where logs are located for pick up. As a result, the operator may visually identify the log piles by experimentally developing routes through a forest or wooded region on an ad hoc basis. The informal development of routes for the forwarder with incomplete information leads to inefficient equipment use and the risk of encountering hazards or impassible areas (e.g., swamps), where the forwarder needs to revise or retrace its path. Thus, a need exists for an enhanced method and system for locating harvested material within a work area.